How to Get Back The Old Facebook Chat or Hide Offline Friends in The New One

A few weeks ago, Facebook rolled out video chat and during this roll out they changed the layout of Facebook as well. The chat window is no longer a pop-out window that can be opened or minimized when needed. Now instead, it’s a permanently visible section on Facebook, sticking to the right of the screen and showing a selection of your friends including those online and offline.

The changes were met with a wave of protest, but this time the outlash was not without merit. The new layout is a confusing jumble of friends who are online and available for chat and friends who are offline, and mostly always are.

Image credit Reddit

Once again browser extensions and userscripts come to the rescue.

Fix the New Facebook Chat is a Chrome extension that hides all offline contacts. Simply install this extension and you are done.

If you want a complete reversal of the new chat interface then get Facebook Sidebar Chat Reversion userscript. This script not only hides all offline friends, but also removes the chat sidebar and returns it back to where it originally belonged – at the bottom of the screen in a pop-up window.

Facebook Sidebar Chat Reversion also orders your friends list by first name, enables grouping of friends by online and idle, and shows total number of online/idle friends when chat bar is open and closed.

It also makes numerous other fixes to the chat system such as:
– Chat bar adjusts in size based on how many friends you have online.
– Chat bar closes when it loses focus to stay out of your way.
– Does not realign the page when chat opens
– Header to the top of chat that closes the menu when clicked.

Facebook Sidebar Chat Reversion can be installed in Firefox through the Greasemoneky extension. It can be also installed in Chrome natively. Opera users can use it as a user Javascript. Support for Safari is unknown but should work.